Ribena – Pegasus Bridge

Disclaimed.

Unscrew The Lid

"Elsa," Jack whined, following after the older blonde of sixteen. "I'm serious."

Elsa turned to look over her shoulder at him, her blue hued eyes twinkling at him.

"So am I. I promise, I'll get you a Ribena after I get this one thing," Elsa said consolingly, like every baby sitter should.

"I don't even like Ribena," Jack said stubbornly, folding his arms petulantly, looking down and to the side at the grimy floor.

Sighing at the repeated argument all the way to where they were, Elsa tamed her breathing before turning fully to face Jack.

"You have never even had Ribena, which may I add," Elsa added with a teasing lilt to her voice, her better mood restored, at the thought of what she was going to do to him. "Is a crime that no twelve year old should ever commit."

Jack rolled his eyes at her adamant belief. He didn't see what was so great about it. From the fact that his mother didn't let him drink it because it would "stain all of his pretty white things" it didn't seem like that big a deal.

It was a thing to accept that he would never experience until he was old enough to rebel against both of his high maintenance parents from which he was born.

Jack huffed just at the thought of the parents that were away again, at a charity gala, leaving him alone with the baby sitter, the girl next door, Elsa Snow.

Not that he minded, of course, as his lascivious mind wandered where most eleven year old boys attempted to go but their imagination never coming close to what their bodies could truly achieve.

"It's just one thing, Jack," Elsa pleaded, grabbing Jack's hands with a fake desperation, her beam bellying her words with each seemingly bleached tooth. "It's just Hans needs this for his modelling shoot tomorrow. Razor advert you know."

Elsa turned back to the racks upon racks of styling gels, protective sprays and pots of hair clay.

Jack puffed his overhanging white fringe out of his eyes irritably.

"No shit, like you hadn't told me a bazillion times," Jack muttered under his breath, his toe scruffing the floor with a squeak as he kicked it.

But of course, being the supreme baby sitter that she was, Elsa heard the swear word a mile away.

Spinning around faster than the eye could see, her hair, while confined in a braid, snapped out with a crack as Elsa bopped him on the head with the magazine that she had grabbed in the shopping spree.

"Language!"

Jack cried out in defence. "What? It's not like I haven't heard that he is a model from the last five times you were here, or the complete fan girling you have been going over him." Jack grumbled, the bitterness coming through his tone. Not that he was jealous or anything. Not at all.

"Whatever Jack, whatever," Elsa said quickly, trying to avoid the blush that predictably came up over her cheeks at the thought of her bragging even becoming noticeable from a boy five years her junior. She had to get her act together.

Her intelligent eyes quickly scanning the remaining brands, she finally saw Hans' brand, one of the most expensive, to her dismay. But that was what people did for the ones they loved.

Elsa fingered the heavy, silky black gloves that Han's had bought her. Ones that she knew for a fact were more than she could afford after at least ten babysitting jobs. She could always ask for money but her parents wanted her to gain a good work ethic and earn everything for herself.

Although the Frost's did pay the best as far as babysitting went. Forty pounds for one session usually even if for four hours but then again if it was a whole day session it was usually a hundred and twenty.

Elsa began to walk back to the front of the petrol station's store where, in the chilled fridge, there was a bottle of original Ribena sitting there innocently, and with an eager smile she took the brooding tween to the counter where she paid the extortionate price for her items and took her and Jack out to her second hand Ford Fiesta paid by her own hands.

Before unlocking the doors, Elsa paused and examined the lighting of the grimy petrol station and she leant against the bonnet of the car, gesturing Jack, holding the bottle of Ribena in his hand to come and perch next to her.

And with obvious reluctance, Jack walked until he was right next to her.

"Come on, open it and let me see you be amazed," Elsa said, pointing to the bottle residing in his hand.

Jack rolled his eyes but snapped the seal and just before he placed the lip of the bottle against his mouth he turned to the almost trembling with excitement teenager and asked a question that had been bothering him for a while.

"Why do you want me to drink Ribena so badly?"

Elsa looked taken aback for a moment and a little guilty when she realised that she had been caught. Then there was a second where she schooled her face.

"I don't know what you are talking about," she said calmly, gesturing to the bottle in his hand again, indicating he should take a drink.

"No, why do you want me to drink Ribena so badly?"

Elsa paused before denying it again just staring down at Jack's face.

It was criminal even at his age.

While he still had the baby fat in his cheeks, his high cheek bones were sharp enough that it made razors look blunt, the thick white lashes were a blanket of snow between his skin and his icey pools of eyes. While he was still smaller than her, in the past two visits, he had grown quicker and quicker, until Elsa could have sworn that it was not the same boy she had known since he was Anna's age.

But why did she want Jack to drink Ribena so badly? It wasn't even that tasty, in fact it was too sweet despite all she said to Jack to try and convince him to take even a sip of it.

It all really started with a little five year old Jack, her being ten but when her father, an equal business tycoon to Jack's father, had been invited to the Frost's.

Elsa had had a bottle of Ribena sitting innocently in her hand yet the little boy had toddled his way over to her and held his hand out and with the grammar of a man trapped in a small boy's body, he said:

"Pleasure to meet you, I'm one of your hosts this evening, Jack Frost," his eyes clear, lucid and innocent. And totally caught on the bottle resting in her hand.

Elsa looked down at her hand and back up to his poor, desperate face.

"Would you like a sip?" she asked kindly, her hand already extended.

Jack Frost nodded his head in a strange mixture of eager and regal. He looked more like nodding Churchill than a child trying to reach for a drink.

But just as Jack reached in for it, a beautiful, tall slender woman swooped in, grabbing Jack by the upper arms steering him away. While used to this behaviour as her parents had done the same thing when she was that age, she was brought the bottle up to her own lips.

And that was when she heard it.

"Gentlemen don't drink such childish things."

It just about broke her. The thought of that adult trapped in a child's body, suffering, yearning just for that one drop of children's mistakes and stains. In the long term, seeming never to ever sample the overly sweet black current, just going on to be drinking water until he was sixteen where he would be able to drink a glass of wine with his meals and then eighteen drink all the champagne he wanted.

His life planned into neat little sections with no room for spontaneity. No room for the mischief she spied in the corner of his eye. There was only enough room for an adult and the adults she knew, didn't like to share.

And so began the obsession to get Jack to drink the forbidden nectar.

Slowly, choosing her words carefully she said:

"I just think it's sad that you have to be one of the only children, not to have drunk Ribena at least once, just because your mother doesn't want you to," Elsa never broke her stare into Jack's who gazed right back, enraptured, his little teeth poking over his lower lip in thought. "You have to do something that you want, not what anyone else wants."

"You want me to drink it," Jack pointed out, his crooked smirk that she hadn't seen the entire time she had babysat him that day.

Elsa gave a shocked laugh before curling her finger around her braid, staring into the space in front of her, unknowingly bringing Jack's gaze to her developing breasts.

"I suppose that's true, but I'm feeling nostalgic. I'm just giving you that drink you asked for so long ago," Elsa said, not looking away from the front of the newspaper in the stand in her direct line of vision.

"That drink?" Jack asked, his white eyebrows furrowing together.

Elsa prodded the little line with a finger, triggering Jack's face to slack with shock, instantly getting rid of the dent.

"You'll be as old as me in a month if you keep doing that," Elsa teased, rolling her magazine up in her hands, a nervous motion that Elsa didn't understand.

Jack stared forward too, lost in his thoughts. If he asked Elsa when he was younger, maybe he deserved to give that younger self some closure? Just to be sure that he hated it. Because of course he did; his parents told him so.

Elsa took a deep breath, turning her head away, not showing that despite her upbringing was more liberal than Jack's, she was under the same rules and regulations as Jack. So Elsa guessed she was trying to live through Jack. She knew it was too late for herself.

Saving his youth where she had already lost hers. And she was going to damn well make sure that he was going to save himself. She offered the life line, it was just his choice to grab it and hold, or to let him sink.

She heard a grunt of surprise and twisting her head, she saw Jack was greedily taking gulps out of the bottle, the plastic wrapping covering it gleaming at her in the blaring lights of the station.

Elsa smirked as she saw a slight trail come out of his mouth to dribble down his chin in his haste to get more of the juice in his mouth.

Getting a finger, Elsa wiped it and placed the sweet juice in her own mouth, sucking it off, Jack just staring open mouthed.

Elsa chuckled, ruffling his hair, she pushed off the front of her car and went to the driver's seat and when Jack didn't follow to go into the other side of the car, she called teasingly to him.

"If you don't move, I'm going to run you over!"

Jack startled into action, raced around the corner and yanked open the passenger door, diving into his seat.

Before buckling his seat belt, Jack just stared at her intensely.

Elsa shifted uncomfortably as she sorted out the mirrors and when the little white haired boy still hadn't said anything, Elsa finally pivoted to contemplate him, waiting.

"I think you are going to give me a complex if you keep staring at me like that," she finally averted her eyes, too intimidated, however reluctant she was to admit it.

Then with the adult in him, Jack scourged for the little remaining confidence and bravery to take the soft apple of Elsa's cheek, her soft hair brushing his fingers. Jack fought down the blush that was threatening to overcome him as Elsa's shocked gaze met his.

"Anything you say, I will do," he said in all seriousness and couldn't control his thumb that began to follow the curved bone of her eye socket leading up to her temple. "Elsa, trust me and I'll trust you. Tell me where next."

Flustered, Elsa pulled away but tried to play down her uneasiness with a slow grin before turning to go through the six point check.

Putting the car in gear, Elsa gave Jack a sideways glance, promising mischief and fun. Little did she know that Jack would then follow her example always.

"Next stop, drive thru McDonald's," Elsa pressed down on the accelerator, causing the tyres to squeal and they were off.

Jack lowered the window and his thick white hair accepted the winter wind and inhaled the sharp scent of the bitterness of the frost.

This was the turning point and Jack vowed, he was going to live life by the Ribena Rules. He'd tasted freedom and he wanted more.

He had unscrewed the cap and he was going to have to whole bottle if it was the last thing he did.

Little did his past self realise how much he was going to give that bottle to Elsa to drink out of and cause a spillage and stain both of their lives, partnering them.

Whether they liked it or not.

Not what you expected? Well, I had to explain the title.

But that delicious scene that was put in the summary? Next chapter, so you better follow to find the deliciousness that is Jack Frost.

This is going to be a five parter, going to be increasing in intensity and length.

So please, please bear with it, I will finish this one if it's the last thing I do.

Kind Regards,

~JustThatKindOfSpecial